New Orleans Police Department has a crime strategy: A letter to the editor by Superintendent Ronal Serpas

I appreciate the two editorials this week regarding our efforts to right the ship in the New Orleans Police Department. However, it would be prudent to remind our community that on Aug. 23, 2010, a detailed 65-point plan to rebuild the department was released and made public.

New Orleans Police Superintendent Ronal Serpas

Key to this plan was our specific strategy to confront crime, violent crime and obviously the crime of murder. Moreover, this plan, with specificity, outlined our initiatives to address integrity, accountability, transparency and collaboration of our work force. In this August release, we discussed specifically how and when the new policies of presumptive termination for untruthful conduct would be addressed.

In January of this year we further refined and made new additions to our efforts regarding violent crime in our city, because as with any plan, there is always room for improvement and/or a need to respond to changing trends. Clearly, while we do see overall crime declines and a trend of lower overall violent crime, we are also witnessing an increase in murder.

As we also have stated publicly numerous times, independent analysis of the Police Department's crime fighting plan announced in August and the overall analysis of the crime of murder in our city is under way. We expect this independent analysis to be released soon.

Finally, the level of violence, particularly murder, is unacceptable in our community. The NOPD refocuses its efforts daily to assist in all that we can do to help reduce this crime. And, it is true, that the vast majority of murders in our city are based in relationships, and we must recognize this fact so that strategies can be made and implemented to interrupt this violence among those who know one another. By collaborating with our neighbors and criminal justice system partners, we believe we can make a difference.